Archive for November 2014

Today I am in beautiful Monterey, California getting ready for my Take Command event. The room is getting set up, I’, reviewing my materials, the event team is busy putting together all the gifts and extras I have for attendees.

We have women (and a few brave men) coming from all over: Florida, Georgia, New York, Colorado, Massachusetts, southern and northern California – and even Switzerland! I am so excited that the big day is finally here after months of preparation and anticipation.

Here’s a picture of the view of the bay from my hotel room. It’s even raining lightly here – which for drought-dried California is a very good thing.

Wherever you are today, whatever you are doing – remember to value and appreciate yourself. You are special and important because you are here at this most potent time on planet earth. You are one of the chosen ones who are seeding the energy of the new world age that will move outward into time for millennia – whether you are doing this purposefully or not. Why not do it with purpose? Embrace your value, give your gifts, charge what you and your services are actually worth – and let’s bring in an even more awesome new world together. That’s what we’ll be doing here in Monterey for the next three days . . .

What would you be able to do, if you doubled your income?
How would you feel?

Tripled or quadrupled it?It’s an exciting thought, isn’t it?

I remember when I was working as a professor at Columbia University, and my income was pretty much set. I had a “good job,” which means it was prestigious. And it paid okay: $40,000/year to live in Manhattan. That was back in the mid-1990s, and money did go farther then. And I also had some great perks, like an apartment overseeing Morningside Park for a reduced rate. Still, it wasn’t a lot of money, and it was fixed.

The idea of doubling, tripling or quadrupling my income was not something I could even conceive of at that time. But it’s exactly what I did when I joined a network marketing company as my way out of academe. I doubled my income from Columbia in 15 months. That’s when I got the entrepreneurial bug. That was 15 years ago, and I’ve never gone back!

Now truth be told, I had expenses as an entrepreneur that I didn’t have as an employee, absolutely. So doubling my revenue was not the same as doubling my “into-my-personal-bank-account” income. I also had many more tax benefits, so in the end I did come out well ahead.

Even more importantly, I began to understand the power of having my own business, of knowing how to generate revenue, and the freedom that I had now that I was in charge of my creating my own income.

That’s what caught my attention—the power and the freedom. Not power over someone else, but the power to create my own destiny and experience. That’s what being an entrepreneur can give you. And doubling, tripling or quadrupling your revenue can be an outcome of learning to use that power, and an expression of your freedom.

Now 15 years later I work with clients and students every day to show them how to claim that power and freedom for themselves. Of course there’s plenty of strategy involved as well. And it’s so important to stay on top of what’s working because we are in a very dynamic and rapidly changing environment. But without claiming the power and the freedom, all the strategy in the world simply will not work. It will slide right off your inner limitations and fall into dust (believe me, I’ve seen it!).

Here are four of my favorite tips for increasing your income immediately:

(1) Decide that it’s possible. Commit to having a possibility mindset that is based on your own appreciation of your worthiness and value. Act as though you really do believe what you espouse—that you live in an abundant and benevolent Universe. Except nothing less than your birthright of full self expression and empowerment. You don’t have to know HOW to do any of this—you just need to believe and commit. The way will appear to you as you commit, and so also the following actions.

(2) Uplevel Your Offerings. Review the ways that people can work with you, and take them to the next level in terms of value and pricing. For example, if you now provide individual sessions to people at $75/hour, increase your rate for individual sessions to $125/hour, and then add a package of 5 sessions for $500. Or if you are already offering a package like this one as well as sessions, then add a 3 or 4 month program for $500-$750 per month. Then instead of having to sell twice as many sessions at the same rate to double your income, you can simply sell one, two, three or more programs to double your income or more.

In order to make this work, you may need to uplevel inside yourself your own sense of the value of what you’re offering. It may be that you already realize that you are undercharging, in which case you just need to act on what you already know.

Or it may be you’ve been comparing your prices to other people’s, and have found it hard to raise your rates. In that case, you’ll need to be honest with yourself about the True Value of what you’re offering and what you bring to the table. My experience is that virtually everyone under-appreciates the value of the transformation they provide to their clients. That comes from your conditioning about your worthiness, and the cultural valuing of certain things over others. It is not about the actual value of what you’re doing. You have to be willing to step into that value in order to feel comfortable raising your rates. But I want you to know it really IS possible—yes!

You probably are giving away services that you aren’t charging for, like email and phone support between sessions. Those are the most common. Build those into your program, and charge for them! That’s one of the easiest ways for you bring in more $$ without doing any more work—just charge for what you are already actually doing.

(3) Increase the amount of outreach you are doing. Talk with more people. Go to more events where your people are likely to be. Make connections with as many people as you can, and invite more people to work with you. Sometimes just increasing the numbers can bring about a big increase in your income.

(4) Seek out people who value and are willing to pay more for your services. Ask yourself, are you sticking with offering your services to people with whom you really comfortable? Do they seem “less evolved” than you and in need of your help? What would it be like to seek out higher caliber clients? Uplevel your belief in what you have to offer, and go after clients who understand and will pay for that higher value. They are out there—you need to be willing to seek them out and talk with them. You would be amazed at how quickly your income can grow when you do this!

Tell me if you found this valuable by leaving a comment below, and what you are willing to do TODAY to uplevel your appreciation of yourself and increase your income. And feel free to share what may be in your way, too—it’s a great way to release it!

Busy, busy, busy getting ready for my big event next week. We are in hive mentality over here, finishing each other’s thoughts over Skype, and buzzing around all the known activities.

I am really enjoying the maturity of my team working together, and the ease that that is bringing. For three out of the four people working with me in Team Ostara, this is our third year working together on Take Command.

We are also working with the same event planning team, Red Elephant Inc., and they’ve been with us for three years as well. There’s a pleasure and security in the longevity of these relationships – practically a lifetime when it comes to a small event and internet-based business! Creating and filling an event is still plenty of work – but with this type of teamwork and experience the ride gets easier and more fun.For Team Ostara: Lisa Tarrant, Sarah Mardell, Geej Mauriva and Octavia Brooks.

For Red Elephant: Afrin Khan, Tawny Grant, and Andrea Kirk.

I am in deep appreciation and gratitude for all of you this morning!!It really does take a Village . . .

This morning I asked my 12-year-old daughter what she would feel if she now had to run my business.

She physically recoiled, and said: “I’d feel stressed and overwhelmed.”

And then I asked her, what kind of thoughts would you have, and she said:

I don’t know how to run all this stuff, it’s too complicated.

I don’t want to have to work that hard. I want to still be able to play.

I really would rather have someone else take care of it.

I wouldn’t know what to do. I would need a lot of help.

Do any of these thoughts and feelings sound familiar?

I hear them on a regular basis from clients and students – and all kinds of people in business – when they are brave enough to acknowledge what is really going on inside of them.

Because even though these thoughts and feelings may be familiar, most people hide them, just like they learned to do in grade school, middle school, and high school, and put on a front so that they would at least appear to have it all together.

Many times these thoughts and feelings are accompanied by others that also got generated earlier in life, ones like these:

People don’t like me, or they don’t like me unless I’m focused on them.

People won’t like me if I speak up about what matters to me (i.e. my business).

(1) Having your inner child or inner teenager get activated in the process of building your business is NORMAL. It’s normal in two senses.

First, in that it’s the norm, it’s typical, it happens to most people at least some of the time. And second it’s normal in that it’s to be expected when you are doing something that is such a potent opportunity for personal growth – which business certainly is.

Your inner child and/or teenager get activated because you are stretching into new, unknown territory which you may not have gotten adequate training for – that, too, is typical for service providers – and that triggers your energy around being liked, accepted, part of the gang/community, etc.

The parts of you that are carrying unhealed wounds or sensitivities from earlier in life get brought to the surface in situations like this. Of course that can be uncomfortable. But it’s also a tremendous gift.

Why?

Because then you have an excellent opportunity to actually resolve those wounds –provided that you realize that this is what is happening and you decide to take command of the situation rather than have these young parts run you – your life and your business.

In another blog article, “The Gift of the Trigger,” I talk more extensively about this process. Let me say here that when triggers arise you have the opportunity to learn about what is more often stored within your subconscious – and therefore running your life without your conscious awareness or consent. And when you learn about it you can change it!

(2) It is your responsibility to learn to work with these parts of yourself so that they are not dominating your consciousness, but instead operate in their rightful place as an aspect of your personality.

The first step, of course is awareness. For you to realize that this is what is happening. To gain perspective on yourself so that you are not just completely blended with that child/teenager within, but also have an observing, witnessing element as well. This can either be your mature self, or soul self – or some combination of the two. Either way, you have an aspect of who you are that can witness the child/teenager. Just that simple (but not always easy) step can make an enormous difference, bringing you relief and insight from the experience of the wounded part.

Because the truth is, your inner child/teenager is NOT EQUIPPED to run your business. You get overwhelmed because that part does not have the maturity, knowledge of the world, or access to resources that are needed to do this work. That part does not have the intellectual capacity to make sound decisions or know how to evaluate an opportunity or organize her time and attention effectively.

But you do. You DO. As a mature adult, you do have all of these. You may not know exactly what to do all the time. None of us do. That’s why we take training courses and have coaches. I certainly do. I just invested in another training course this week, and signed on for another year with my coach. Because I KNOW that I need resources and guidance and I invest in getting them on a regular basis. That is the act of a mature personality – getting the right strategic training and guidance when you need it.

Throwing money at trainings and coaches is NOT a mature act. Buying things on a whim to make yourself feel better – that’s a child who has a credit card trying to solve her overwhelm by putting her issues on someone else’s shoulders. I see this all too often – and unfortunately the coaching industry as a whole preys on this behavior way more than I like.

Or the other side – not investing in the support you need because you don’t trust it (like you don’t trust the teachers or parents you grew up around). Or even worse, you don’t utilize the training and support you paid for because your child feels overwhelmed by new challenges – and you allow yourself to stay stuck in that place.

But you can change this – when you know what is happening and you decide to make changing this a priority. One thing to determine for yourself is how extreme is this blending for you, and how much are you living your life through the eyes of an overwhelmed child?

This is both a psychological and a spiritual matter, and I want to share resources with you about both.

The work that comes out of Internal Family Systems – known as IFS or “Parts Work” can be very helpful for being able to identify and work with your inner landscape from a psychological point of view. They have a great website at www.selfleadership.org with lots of information, and a list of practitioners all over. They also have a bookstore with many resources. This is a non-pathologizing approach to personal growth and development that is highly practical and that you can use everyday in your business.

For a spiritual approach, the work of my main teachers Sanaya Roman and her guide Orin is very beneficial for learning about and evolving your personality. Their book Living with Joy, and meditation series “Transforming Your Personality” are great places to start. They have an enormous library of work created over the last 30 years. You can access it at www.OrinDaBen.com.

If you have tried a more spiritual or transformational approach to working with your inner child/teenager and you have not yet gotten the command of your consciousness that enables you to be effective on a daily basis, then you would benefit from a more psychological approach.

Having worked with MANY clients and students over the years on exactly these issues (and with myself and in my family, too), I can say for sure that sometimes transformational work misses the mark and you need something more basic or primary. The IFS work – or working with a talented therapist – is then the route you want to take.

Overwhelm, confusion, fear of work and commitment can be overcome with more awareness and purpose.This does NOT mean you have to then work yourself to death. It does mean you need to find a way to develop a relationship to work that enables you to be focused, effective, and purposeful – and to enjoy the journey. Because without that, none of this is worth it!

Engagement and work are required. Struggle and suffering are optional.

I always look forward to November 11th, not just because it’s Veteran’s Day and a holiday for some, but because of the alignment of 11.11. This year I discovered that day three of my Take Command Event, November 22 or 11.22 is also a particularly auspicious day. So much so that I wrote you about it in today’s article! My life number is 22/4, the sign of the Master Builder. So all of this is coming together in the most interesting – and “unplanned by me but planned by the universe” way.

I also set energy for my event last night in a Shamanic session, and while that was happening I was also drawing – so I am including the drawing here for you to see! I am not a very visual person, so drawing and painting are really helpful for me to stimulate that ability in me.

This is such a fun time of creating all the beautiful materials for attendees, ordering the food, working with team members to make sure all the details are handled. I am starting to think about the flowers I want. My first “real” job was as a florist in my early 20s at the end of my undergraduate years and before I went to graduate school. Ever since, I have always done my own flowers for every event – for my wedding, for parties, and now for my retreats and events. This helps me feel connected to the setting of the room, and the beauty we’re providing. I love the smell, the feel, and the look of the flowers that I’ll have on my table and that everyone will see.

I don’t typically write you about numerology and astrology, but we have two days coming up this month that are so super charged and important that I feel called to write to you about them.

November 11th, 11.11, is always a potent day. It’s a day of new beginnings, as the number one is the birth of action from the void and potential of zero, and 11.11 has four ones. The number eleven or 11 represents the Pillars of the Soul, energy moving quickly from the heavens (light realms) into the earth without impedance of any curvature. Zoom, the energy moves between these pillars of 1 and 1.

So on this day of 11.11, you will have access to an open channel to bring your Soul’s light and energy into the YOU you know as you, your personality self, your everyday self. This is a portal day, or gateway day, in which you can go forward strongly into your future.

The question is, what will you take with you? Will you take all of your baggage from the past through this portal into your future? Or will you decide instead to shed that which you no longer need or desire – reactions, wounds, grudges, and those pesky wouldas, couldas and shouldas?

What if you were to travel lightly through this gateway? What would happen then?

Did you know that you can change the energy of your past by releasing your emotional attachment to it?

And when you change your relationship to your past, you change the possibilities for your future?

Just eleven days later, on November 22nd, on 11.22, we have another potent day with a very rare alignment. Both 11 and 22 are master numbers, 22 is the master builder – which just happens to be my life number. This year, 11.22.14, is also the day that the Sun moves in Sagittarius and there’s a new moon in Sagittarius.

This is a VOID day – a day from which ANYTHING can be created. This is a time to be deliberate, to be focused, about letting go of the past, the fears, doubts, and worries. And take inspiration to create your vision and explore how you want to build it!

When I planned the dates for my Take Command Event, I didn’t realize that 11.22 was such an auspicious day. But I receive the blessing of spirit to make this happen for me and for all of us. Now I am even more inspired about what we will be doing in just a couple of weeks – and with the possibilities of the transformation we will be creating as we go through this portal of Master Builder – together!

What will you be doing on 11.11 and 11.22?

How will you choose to align with nature and be consciously creating with the hologram of the universe?